Dec. 18, 2025, 5:05 a.m. ET
When the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition announced recently its high school winners in Paris, the grand prize went to a Chinese team from Shenzhen. Six of the nine runners-up were also from China.
Only one American school ‒ Lambert High in suburban Atlanta ‒ made it into the top 10.
Dominating academic performances by Chinese students has become routine news. In addition to winning science contests like iGEM, they also outscore everyone on international standardized tests like PISA. This often leads to American handwringing about how China is leaving American students in the dust, with implications for competitiveness in STEM fields and the global economy.
The reality is more complicated.
China’s educational pipeline vs. America’s ‘islands of excellence’
China has a highly selective, intensely pressurized educational pipeline that develops a narrow slice of students to an extremely high level. The United States, by contrast, has “islands of excellence” like Lambert that sit atop an educational system that doesn’t always set up students for success in science, technology, engineering and mathematics ‒ especially in elementary school.
I saw the structure and pressure of China’s system when I conducted dissertation research in Shanghai middle schools. Administrators would not even allow me to speak with eighth graders, explaining that they were far too busy preparing for high-stakes high school entrance exams to be interrupted by a researcher.
Another winnowing happens at the university level. Those who rise to the top are extraordinarily well prepared, but they represent a small, highly filtered slice of China’s youth.
For example, the team that won the iGEM grand prize, GreatBay-SCIE, is drawn from Shenzhen College of International Education, an elite, highly selective international high school that further tracks students into demanding STEM programs. Many Chinese teams at iGEM come from similar schools.
Likewise, when China has participated in PISA, it does not participate as a whole country. Only students from its most advantaged provinces ‒ Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Zhejiang ‒ are tested. These are wealthy, urban school systems that are fiercely competitive. They are not representative of the nation’s whole 200-plus million student body.
But if China’s results are not the whole story, neither are America’s excuses. Despite all the emphasis on STEM over the past decade or more, the uncomfortable truth is that U.S. schools are not designed to produce such excellence at scale.
What my research of American schools found
Look at elementary school instruction in math and science, where long-term trajectories for STEM education are set. In a typical American classroom, one person is expected to teach every subject ‒ reading, writing, math, social studies, science, often art and health as well. That teacher may prepare five or six lessons a day, leaving little time to study any one subject deeply.
Our RAND teacher survey research indicates that only 1 out of every 10 teachers of elementary mathematics is certified in math. Instead, most hold a multisubject teaching credential, and some states don’t require a math or science specific test to get that.
Less than 5% of elementary school science teachers have a STEM undergraduate degree, according to national surveys in 2012 and 2018.
Chinese teachers, by contrast, have been specializing at the elementary level for decades, as observed by Liping Ma in her canonical book on the subject. A math teacher teaches math, moving from class to class. Another teacher handles Chinese language. Another, English. This lets teachers invest all of their planning time on subject-specific lessons. Math teachers can analyze student errors and work with colleagues to improve their instruction techniques. They don’t divide their attention among five subjects.
My U.S. research also underscores what a difference this makes. I studied three schools as their district was adopting a challenging new math curriculum. In two schools, most classes were self-contained, so one teacher handled all subjects. In the other school, most teachers specialized: They either taught math and science or literary and social studies.
I could see the difference. Teachers in the latter school discussed mathematics instruction regularly with one another. They had time and headspace to understand the material, anticipate where their students would struggle and refine how they would explain it. Their peers who had to teach every subject simply didn’t have the time to do that work.
If federal and state leaders are serious about competing with countries like China in STEM, they should start by rethinking mathematics and science teaching, especially at the elementary level. Federal policy cannot dictate local staffing decisions, of course. But it can create incentives that would advance math education on three fronts:
- First, create math and science departments in upper elementary grades. When students are taught by true math specialists, that lays the foundation for more to excel at STEM.
- Second, require that those who teach math beyond the earliest grades to complete substantial, focused coursework in mathematics and its pedagogy ‒ not just generic education requirements.
- And third, build school schedules so that math teachers can work together on lessons, analyze student work and deepen their own understanding.
These ideas will not turn every American school into an iGEM powerhouse like Lambert High School, which had advantages. Its lab, “funded by Forsyth County, Georgia, taxpayers, as well as corporate donors, is college-level. And the school is in one of Georgia’s most affluent, high-achieving school districts,” according to “60 Minutes.”
Nor do we want to replicate China’s narrowly selective schooling system.
But in a world where the role of technology is growing in every occupation and we are striving to be leaders in STEM innovation, the United States needs to stop relying on accidents of geography and heroic individual teachers.
Julia Kaufman is a senior policy researcher and directs the Education & Employment Program at RAND, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research institute. She holds a PhD in international education from New York University.
